Symposium
Degrees of Freedom. Art Programs at Universities Freiheitsgrade. Kunstprogramme in Universitäten
Leuphana University Lüneburg/Germany 16 - 18 November 2011
Universities are sites of research and of teaching. They are sometimes also home to artistic practice. The symposium "Degrees of Freedom. Art Programs at Universities" explores the roles and potentials of art programs at universities, both for artists and for the universities themselves. Experts from different fields and institutional contexts discuss historical examples of specific programs, experiences and incidents from different countries. A particular focus will be placed on the different ways in which the artistic practice is integrated into university structures. The symposium asks, firstly, how universities can foster and support artistic work and how artists can best benefit from the university setting. Secondly, we will discuss the role of artistic practice in the university and explore the potential of art practice for a research and teaching institution. Thirdly, we will be looking at concepts like agency, knowledge, creativity, etc., and debate how their different connotations in art, science, research and teaching can be brought into a fruitful dialogue. – The symposium "Degrees of Freedom" will prepare and inaugurate the new "Leuphana Arts Program" through which Leuphana University will, in the coming years, bring artists into the university. Participants include: Jens Hauser (Ruhr Universität Bochum), Irène Hediger (Swiss Artists-in-Labs, ZhdK Zurich), Sarat Maharaj (Lund University), Pierre Guillet de Monthoux (Copenhagen Business School), Sally-Jane Norman (Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, University of Sussex), Susanne Märtens (HBK Braunschweig), Claus Pias, Beate Soentgen, Martin Warnke, Ulf Wuggenig (all Leuphana University Lüneburg), a.o. Moderation: Andreas Broeckmann (Leuphana Arts Program) Supported by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony.
Schedule: Wed 16 Nov, 17:00-21:00 Informal Get Together, Introduction, Opening Reception Thu 17 Nov, 09:00-18:00 Symposium, 19:00-21:00 Panel discussion with Sarat Maharaj, followed by LAP inaugural Reception Fri 18 Nov, 09:00-13:00 Symposium, Closing Lunch
Participation is free, reservation requested at:
Contact Leuphana Universität Lüneburg Leuphana Ars Program Scharnhorststr. 1, Raum C5.225 21335 Lüneburg Tel. +49 4131 677 2204 E-Mail [email protected] Web www.leuphana.de/lap
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Schedule
Wednesday 16 November
17:00-21:00 Get Together, Introduction of the participants, Opening Reception
Thursday 17 November
09:00 Welcome by Holm Keller, Vice-President of Leuphana University Lüneburg
09:15-13:00 Symposium (statements and discussion)
– Andreas Broeckmann (Leuphana Arts Program): Introduction - Art at Universities
– Irène Hediger (Swiss Artists-in-Labs, ZhdK Zurich): Think Art - Act Science
– Ulf Wuggenig (Leuphana University Lüneburg): Interaction of Art and (Social) Science
– Sally-Jane Norman (Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, University of Sussex): Values and Traffics
Lunch break, optional visit to Kunstraum exhibition space
15:00-18:00 Symposium (statements and discussion)
– Jens Hauser (Ruhr Universität Bochum): Epistemological Biomedia - Epistemic Art
– Martin Warnke (Leuphana University Lüneburg): Artistic research and researching artworks: What could a pictorial turn mean to research on art?
Break
19:00-20:30 Panel discussion "Between or Beyond the Disciplines" with Sarat Maharaj (Lund University)
followed by LAP Inaugural Reception
Friday 18 November
09:00-13:00 Symposium
– Pierre Guillet de Monthoux (Copenhagen Business School): Cities Foundations Studios. Spaces of Art & Management Encounters
– Susanne Märtens (HBK Braunschweig): Art and the Production of Knowledge - Perspectives for Art Academies
Closing discussion
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Biographies and Abstracts
Andreas Broeckmann
Andreas Broeckmann is an art historian and curator who lives in Berlin and Lüneburg. He is Director of the new Leuphana Arts Program at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg. He was the Founding Director of the Dortmunder U - Centre for Art and Creativity (2009-2011) and has curated exhibitions and festivals in major European venues, incl. transmediale and ISEA2010 RUHR. He holds a PhD in Art History from the University of East Anglia, Norwich/UK, and lectures internationally about the history of modern art, media theory, machine aesthetics, and digital culture.
Pierre Guillet de Monthoux
Pierre Guillet de Monthoux is a professor of Management Philosophy and head of the Department for Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. He is also working in Switzerland, Germany, Finland, Sweden and Italy and does research in the area of integrating Art and Management education and practice. He currently works on bridging humanities and liberal arts into business education by exploring aesthetic philosophies and practices. Pierre has double French and Swedish citizenships and lives in Denmark and France.
Cities Foundations Studios; Spaces of Art & Management Encounters.
After a theoretical and empirical research into art management overlaps, I embarked on the adventure of a Nomadic University. This project came out the debates in the European Cultural Parliament and has explored places where art, economy and management meet. each year Nomads have been visiting three Oasis and in between experienced several Mirages. We have listed spaces in Cities, Foundations and Studios where learning and experimenting can tap the sources of aesthetics. Now we use the experience to fuel our research and education at CBS in Denmark. Let's look a bit at our road movie...
Jens Hauser
Jens Hauser is a Paris-based curator, author and arts and culture critic. With a background in Media Studies and Science Journalism, he focuses on the interactions between art and technology, as well as on trans-genre and contextual aesthetics. He has curated exhibitions such as L’Art Biotech (Nantes, 2003), Still, Living (Perth, 2007), sk-interfaces (Liverpool, 2008/Luxembourg, 2009), the Article Biennale (Stavanger, 2008), Transbiotics (Riga 2010), Fingerprints... (Berlin, 2011) and Synth-ethic (Wien, 2011). Hauser organizes interdisciplinary conferences and guest lectures at universities and international art academies. In his current research at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, he investigates the biomediality and wetware paradigms. Hauser is also a founding collaborator of the European culture channel ARTE and has produced numerous radio features.
Epistemological Biomedia – Epistemic Art
Linking artistic to academic research can produce epistemic art forms beyond mere aesthetic representation of scientific concepts. This may occur especially when artists interdisciplinarily employ or subvert techno-scientific apparatuses and experimental systems by pointing to the blind spots in knowledge production and to embedded cultural metaphors in research practices,
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therefore feeding back into manifold academic disciplines. As a case study, the artistic use of biomedia as means of expression provides fruitful examples of such interdisciplinary contamination. Such projects pave the way for seeing biotechnologies as media in a broader sense, deriving from the origin of this term in physics and biology and going beyond the digital age’s understanding of media functions of the transmitting, storing and processing of information or audiovisual data. Further on, they raise questions about the economy, ecology and sustainability, and help reveal historical lines such as illusionism or indexicality in unusual and fruitful ways. In such art, mediation and technologies are no longer employed merely to achieve an aesthetic effect, but rather are fully-integrated elements of the aesthetic idiom. Therefore, biomedia projects are good examples for trans-disciplinary challenges beyond a purely hermeneutic or image-based approach.
Irène Hediger
Irène Hediger is Co-Director of the Swiss artists-in-labs (artistsinlabs.ch) program at the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts (ICS) at the Zurich University of the Arts and curator of the travelling exhibition Think Art – Act Science (thinkartactscience.com). After her studies in business administration, she received a degree in organizational development and group dynamics (DAGG) and a Master of Advanced Studies in Cultural Management at the University of Basel. She specializes in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary creative processes and practices and in the development of inclusive and participatory outreach concepts.
Susanne Märtens
Susanne Märtens works as Academic Staff at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig (Academy of Fine Arts) in the Institute of Art History and Theory, as well as in the Institutes of Art Communication Design and Industrial Design. She worked as the head of Visitor Services at documenta 12, Quadriennale 2006 and at the Henri Matisse exhibition (2006) at K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen/Düsseldorf, and as an assistant to Berlin-based artist Adrian Piper. She taught at the art academies of Dresden and Braunschweig, and at Humboldt University. Studied Art History and Comparative Religious Studies at Free University Berlin and at the Courtauld Institute in London. Publications a.o. on caricature around 1800 and the aesthetics of the 18th century grotesque.
Art and the Production of Knowledge – Perspectives for Art Academies
Braunschweig University of Art (HBK) will be celebrating its 50th year as an art academy in 2013. As a form of critical preparation of this event, philosopher Hannes Böhringer and I are organizing the conference "Careful! Risk. Art and Science / Art and the Production of Knowledge - Perspectives for Art Academies", 9-11 November 2011. The conference has the task of stimulating a debate within the HBK about the objectives it is setting itself for the future. In view of the ongoing changes in study structures as a result of the Bologna Reform, it is fundamentally important to raise the issue of the dissolution of the borders between the arts, design and sciences. What possibilities and also what risks does the shaping of this constellation present for an art academy today? My statement at the "Degrees of Freedom" symposium will summarize the results of the conference and will give an insight into the discussions inside our institution with regard to its status quo and future development.
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Sarat Maharaj
Sarat Maharaj was born and educated in South Africa during the Apartheid years. He did his PHD in the UK on ‘The Dialectic of Modernism and Mass Culture: Studies in British Art’ (1985). He was Professor of Art History at Goldsmiths University of London since 1980 (now Visiting Research Professor). He is currently Professor of Visual Art & Knowledge Systems, Lund University & the Malmo Art Academies, Sweden. He was Rudolf Arnheim Professor, Philosophy Faculty, Humboldt University, Berlin (2001-02) and Research Fellow at the Jan Van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht (1999-2001). His specialist research and publications focus on Marcel Duchamp, James Joyce and Richard Hamilton, Monkeydoodle, Visual Art as Know-How and No-How, Textiles, Xeno-Sonics and Xeno- Epistemics, Cultural Translation. He is the chief curator of the Gothenburg Biennale: ‘Pandemonium: art in a time of creativity fever’ (2011).
Sally Jane Norman
Born in Aotearoa/ New Zealand, holder of dual French citizenship, Sally Jane Norman has been Director of the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts and Professor of Performance Technologies at the University of Sussex in Brighton/UK since January 2010, after serving as Founding Director of Culture Lab at Newcastle University (from 2004) and Director General of the Ecole supérieure de l'image (Angoulême/ Poitiers, from 2001). Holder of a Doctorat de 3ème cycle and Doctorat d'état from the Institut d'études théâtrales, Paris III, Sally Jane's publications deal with art and technology, and interdisciplinary research. She has worked for organisations including the International Institute of Puppetry (Charleville-Mézières), Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (Karlsruhe), and Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (Amsterdam), where she was Artistic Co-Director from 1998-2000.
Values and Traffics
A core concern for inter- or transdisciplinary endeavour of any kind is the need to reconcile sometimes radically contrasting stakeholder values. These may be deeply embedded in discursive systems and methodologies, and imply very different perceptions of time frames, interactions, and objectives. For this discussion on art programmes at universities, I propose to reference some of the environments in which I've been engaged in research involving the arts alongside other domains, focusing more specifically on how diverse conceptions of values influence their traffic.
Claus Pias
Claus Pias is Professor of Media Theory and Media History the the Institute for the Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media (ICAM) at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He studied Electronics in Aachen and Art History, German Studies and Philosophie in Bonn and Bochum. In 1993 he became a lecturer in History of Architecture at Bauhaus University Weimar. In 1996 he worked there in Joseph Vogel's department of the History and Theory of Artificial Worlds. He became a Junior Professor of Media Technology and Media Philosophy at Ruhe-University Bochum in 2002 and was Professor of Epistemology and Philosophy of Digital Media at Vienna University from 2006 till 2010.
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Beate Söntgen
Professor of Art History at Leuphana University, Lüneburg. Academic Studies of History of Art, Philosophy and Modern German Literature at the University of Marburg and Berlin. PHD in 1996 at FU Berlin. 1997-98 Postdoc Scholarship at the Graduate School ‘Representation –Rhetoric- Knowledge’ at European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder; 1998-2003 Academic Assistant at the Institute of History of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Braunschweig. 2002-2003 Laurenz-Professor for Contemporary Art at the University of Basel. 2003-2011 Professor of Art History at Ruhr-University Bochum. 2008-2011 Director of Graduate Studies “Kunstkritik und Kuratorisches Wissen”. Contributed to exhibitions, lately as a Co-Curator of the ‘Kunstsammlungen Nordrhein-Westfalen’, ‘K20’ Düsseldorf: 'Matisse. Figur-Farbe-Raum | Matisse. Figure-Colour-Space.’ Member of “Netzwerk Ornament”, University of Basel (eikones) and of “Exzellenzcluster Kulturelle Poetologie des Auftretens”, University of Konstanz. 2009 Flaubert-Guest Professor, University of Munich/Venice. Publications on art of the 18th to 21st century and on art theory. Forthcoming: 'Interieur. Von der Zugänglichkeit des Bildes in Barock und Moderne.'
Martin Warnke
Martin Warnke was born in 1955, studied in Berlin and Hamburg, acquired his PhD in theoretical physics in 1984, and then began his affiliation with the University of Lüneburg, where he was head of the computing and media center for many years. He finished his Habilitation at the University of Lüneburg in 2008, becoming an associate professor for digital media/cultural computer science, and is currently the university’s Director of the Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media at the Faculty Culture. He is also a visiting professor in Vienna, Klagenfurt, and Basel and works in the fields of history, digital media, and the digital documentation of complex works of art. He heads the Meta- Image research project, and works with the IFIP and the Gesellschaft für Informatik, as counsellor to the Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft. Publications include: "Theorien des Internet zur Einführung." Hamburg: Junius Verlag 2011; "God is in the Details. or: the Filing Box Answers." In: Imagery in the 21th Century, Cambridge/London: MIT Press 2011; (with Carmen Wedemeyer): "Documenting Artistic Networks. Anna Oppermann's Ensembles Are Complex Networks." In: Leonardo, Volume 44, 3/2011; (ed.) "HyperKult II – Zur Ortsbestimmung analoger und digitaler Medien." Bielefeld: transcript 2005.
Artistic research and researching artworks: What could a pictorial turn mean to research on art?
Artists like Anna Oppermann or scholars like Donald Preziosi used and thought of images that directly responded to images, and built up image chains of visual thinking. This procedure once was forbidden for scholarly work, since the realm of pictorial similarity, not of logical argument, was, secondo Foucault, since the beginning of the seventeenth century “no longer the form of knowledge but rather the occasion of error, the danger to which one exposes oneself when one does not examine the obscure region of confusions.” But since Wittgenstein introduced a term like "Familienähnlichkeit" into philosophy as an analytical term, things seem to change. How to work in an exact manner with images as arguments? What could technology and what could artistical research could achieve in a university like Leuphana? The talk gives hints to recent work.
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Ulf Wuggenig
Ulf Wuggenig is a sociologist and cultural theorist working at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He is the director of the University's art space Kunstraum which he co-founded, together with Beatrice von Bismarck and Diethelm Stoller, in 1993. Co-organiser of several EU Culture 2000 projects ("republic art", "transform", "translate"). His research includes empirical studies on the art world in different cities. Wuggenig studied Sociology, Philosophy and Political Studies at Vienna University from where he also holds a PhD. Habilitation at the University Erlangen-Nürnberg. He has taught Art and Visual Culture, Cultural Theory and Intercultural Studies at different universities, incl. Zurich University of the Arts and University of Applied Arts Vienna.
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